SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD FOR FRASER CROMARTY

A major driving force in the Scottish golf industry has been honoured with a Special Recognition award for his work promoting the game in the Highlands.

Fraser Cromarty, the CEO of The Nairn Golf Club, was presented with the honour in front of more than 350 industry representatives at the Scottish Golf Tourism Awards last night (Thursday, 26 Oct) at the Trump Turnberry resort.

The Special Recognition award goes to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to golf tourism in Scotland.

Fraser has extensive experience in club development and promoting the Highlands as a golfing destination. He is very well known and widely respected in the golfing world and has a wealth of management and financial experience under his belt.

He said: “This is a wonderful honour to receive from people within the industry. The Highlands is a fantastic place to visit and play golf and it has been my privilege to help it develop as a must-see destination.”

Fraser, A member of the Professional Golfers’ Association, has been Chief Executive Officer at Nairn since 2013.

He is also chairman of Highland Golf Links (HGL), a partner group set up in 2011 which promotes play and stay golfing breaks in the Highlands. HGL includes Nairn, Castle Stuart Golf Links and Royal Dornoch Golf Club, as well as leading hotels, the Kingsmills and Culloden House, in Inverness, and the Royal Golf in Dornoch.

Fraser is event organiser of the HGL 54-hole Pro-Am sponsored by the Blue Group which is played over the three courses and attracts late-season business to the north of Scotland worth an estimated £300,000.

This year’s event, held from 2-4 October, attracted a record field of 300 players in 80 teams from the UK, Europe and Doha.

He has also been instrumental in extending the reach of the Paul Lawrie Foundation into the Highlands. The foundation’s Winter Series, aimed at helping junior players continue to play competitive golf between November and March, has Nairn Golf Club as one of its founder members and is also supported by HGL.

Fraser has been responsible for organising and running the majority of the Winter Series events throughout the Highlands.

In his early career Fraser spent ten years at Inverness Golf Club where he trained to become a PGA professional under the guidance of Alastair Thompson.

He later helped launch Golf Highland, a group set up to promote golf in the Highlands and ran an operation combining a mix of golf courses and accommodation providers with over 80 members for four years.

In 2004 he became head of the new golfing division at Macdonald Hotel Group, developing the Spey Valley course from scratch and managing six other Macdonald golf resorts under a new structure.

He later joined Castle Stuart Golf Links as sales and marketing director from its opening in 2009.